Feb 25, 2011

Century West Engineering, a national brain trust nestled in the Pacific Northwest but whose reach extends quite a bit further, was recognized once again for their technical excellence, innovative solution orientation, almost supernatural ability to remain on schedule and within budget as well as a quite excellent ability to work with entities and unusual life forms and cultures from other worlds, regardless of how annoying and/or quirky they can be. Century West, under the astute leadership of a certain Dennis Fuller, has multiple branch offices, namely in the Portland area and Spokane, is well known for bringing engineering excellence into even the most backward and primitive of settings and has a quite startling track record of providing almost unbelievable infrastructure improvements into inhospitable environments long deemed inaccessible or culturally prohibitive by civil engineering and construction experts on any number of planets.

“Well, I remember that time we had to put in those new roads on that planet in the Orion Cluster that had 8 times the gravity of earth! Wow, that was a memorable one! Of course, everyone at Century West knows how to use a scientific calculator, so our load and stress calculations were just a matter of conversion, so it was not really that hard” said an unnamed Century West engineer, who shuns the spotlight like they all seem to do for some reason. “Oh, but a really difficult one was when we got the assignment to go into Lamont, WA and pave over half the town!" he winced! "Talk about bizarre! Talk about a hostile, alien world! Yikes! I did not handle that assignment as lead engineer thank goodness, Bryan Hicks did, but just hearing stories as told by their mayor about the natives and their outrageously unreasonable demands and how the local life forms wanted to use the heavy equipment to do their daily chores was really disturbing and kept me up for many a night, let me tell you! Oh, that was pretty much a worst case scenario, but we managed to get it done on time and under budget! They never told us about towns like Lamont in engineering school, thank goodness. Just imagine the drop out rate! We would have all switched to an easy major like marketing or whatever! Come to think of it, finishing that assignment on time and on budget with one's sanity intact was pretty much a dadburned miracle and in fact went a long way to strengthen my faith in the Almighty Himself!” he said thankfully while gazing lovingly at the Heavens!

“Oh yeah, and I remember that time we were tasked with pumping boiling sulfur water to the surface for the inhabitants on that little planet in the Crab Nebula! Sheesh! The atmosphere was 79% ammonia and the average surface temperature was 216 C – but with a little bit of planning and the proper protective gear we managed to bring the inhabitants of that purple world the life-sustaining refreshment that they so sorely needed” he said proudly. “Oh, but I remember that time there was that little town in the Scablands, Lamont again, I think it was, oh, now that was a difficult one. Yes, very disturbing! They had just about the worst water imaginable and the town was about to be condemned, but as if having to work with the townfolk and that so-called mayor was not bad enough, yet it was -10 F too, and having all those citizens come tumbling out in their tattered bathrobes making insane, scatological demands – oh, it was simply horrid! Thankfully the expression “what does not kill us makes us stronger” is in fact true! Whew, I would not want to go thru that one again! Talk about a hostile world! Talk about cantankerous humanoids! Talk about a clash of cultures! Yikes!! (Hey, don't forget all that morning breath or that woman who came out every day in 'short-shorts!!)” he shuddered!

“Oh, and there was that time that we were tasked with developing and building a data repository on that distant planet that was completely covered in water. Somehow those alien entities had struck on the idea that all their records should be stored on a substance very similar to what we know on earth as crepe paper, so making sure no water ever got near the stuff was very challenging. Plus, the whole dern planet was chocked full of these shark-like things that could see in the dark and quite quickly developed a hankering for the taste of human flesh! Whoa, talk about an engineering balancing act! But that was nothing compared to that time the fine Whitman County Commissioners gave Lamont a quite staggeringly generous grant for $52,000 to build a new library! Oh, working with that unique life form was the worst of all! On that project we had to assist them in putting in water, septic and the building itself! Oh, that challenged the cumulative social, cultural, psychological, anthropological and engineering expertise of our entire organization! It was so bad that Dennis Fuller, a man who obviously has a big soft spot for the dysfunctional underdog, had to step in to take command! Talk about leading from the front! Talk about taking the hits for the team! Talk about carrying the lumber and bearing the load! Oh, that Dennis is the best boss ever! He is never one to pass off the difficult, seemingly hopeless assignments to his quite capable staff, that is for sure!” he said frankly without even a hint of brown-nosing.

Feb 24, 2011

The town of Lamont, a wayward hamlet cast adrift in some hellish nightmare known as 'The Scablands', is currently in the latest in a long line of ‘dust-ups’ with the area (non-resident) farmers/ranchers and their troubling aversion to flush toilets, particularly within the town of Lamont itself. Lamont, a humble little town that the area farmers/ranchers who have supervised Lamont’s decline for 60+ years without lifting a finger and who seem hell-bent on destroying just so their ramshackle ranches don't look bad in comparison, anyway - the investigative reporting unit at the Lamont Blog, thru tireless efforts and gallons of that largely worthless Folgers Coffee, has uncovered the supposed root cause of the farmer/rancher apprehension to basic amenities that other towns have taken for granted for almost 100 years – like the seemingly basic flush toilet itself. On the surface, the very idea that a group of farmers/ranchers in this day and age (who do not even live within the town limits, for Pete's sake!) would be so violently opposed to such things as flush toilets, libraries, planning grants for new fire stations, fire hydrants and the like seems impossible – but this is Lamont with its unique gumbo of a shocking farmer/rancher sense of entitlement, a well-below average overall education level (for decades the farmers/ranchers ran the school board! Go figure!) as well as what many believe to be a Satan-inspired desire to befriend and support local criminals and to gossip and undermine and destroy progress at every opportunity (Judge a tree by its fruit, as the Good Book says multiple times!) Anyway!

Thru exhaustive (and exhausting!) journalism and in-depth analysis of the facts, the Lamont Blog has determined that the farmers/ranchers (Not all of them, folks! We have a few fine ones - like the ones who actually help the Town! We are simply referring to the noisy, thick-headed, destruction-oriented ones - you know - the ones who are against libraries and toilets and using fire hydrants with 82 psi and things like that!! They are pretty easy to pick out! Plus, they are the ones who tend to not smell very good sometimes, if you know what we mean), anyway, thru what can only be described as one profoundly sad set of educational shortcomings, these troublesome farmers/ranchers are supposedly not so much opposed to Lamont having a public ‘commode’, (or so they say!) but what they are opposed to is the town of Lamont having a public ‘Komodo’ (that is a big lizard, folks! A man-eater! From Indonesia or one of those places over there!) locked in a dark room in the new library where people could just stumble in upon the poor thing by accident or whatever. (Oh brother! See the types of primitive double-talk and excuse making we get around here from supposedly ‘upstanding citizens' who should know better, but have no natural restraints in their pursuit of control and power? Yikes!!) (See previous article on 'The Dumbest Son Inheriting The Ranch'. Thank you) “Well, this has all been one big misunderstanding, dadburn it!” said Wilber Snopes, an area farm/ranch spokesperson. “I got about 100 (pronounced ‘a-hunnert’) phone calls from irate farmers and ranchers across the state and the whole dadburn nation telling us to knock off our stupid, ignorant, foolish, luddite-like behaviors and stop being Medieval cretins who are dead set on destroying all the good things in Lamont. So, anyway, after I got all this loving support and solidarity from my ‘brothers of a different ranch mother’ I decided that we needed a cover story so that the GLMA farmers/ranchers could stop embarrassing farmers/ranchers the world over with all our obviously ignorant tom-foolery! That is when one of the local farm hands, some new feller not from these parts, was just trying to be helpful and came up with the 'Komodo dragon' idea as a cover story (this guy didn’t graduate from a GLMA school decades ago, thank goodness, when all this dadburn trouble started - so the man knew what an actual komodo dragon was! The Lamont school is quite excellent now, BTW, once we got the farmers/ranchers who sent all their kids to private schools or St. John off the doggone local school board! Why is there no law against being on a school board yet sending your kids to a different school? That seems very, very wrong somehow!) Anyway.

“It just don’t seem prudent to me to have the town go spending all that hard earned tax money on some big lizard thing or whatever – especially when many of us farmers and ranchers are used to spending that same money on 'make work' jobs for our wives or whatever so the money comes into our pockets eventually" he chuckled. "Plus, lizards like the warm weather, so just think of them heating bills and all! Oh yeah, and what are they going to feed the dern thing? So, see, we ain’t against no dadburned flush toilet, we are against some big, scary dragon thing that I ain’t never heard of before yesterday when all them real rancher fellers from other counties and states called me to yell at me to stop embarrassing ranchers the world over. (Guilt by association is indeed a tragic thing!) I told you we farmers/ranchers ain’t all that bad out here" he lied shamelessly, giving a very insincere wink! "If they would just let us destroy Lamont once and for all and praise us endlessly for doing it, then we would have no more problems with the town at all and we could all live in peace until we decided what else we wanted to reduce to rubble as some cosmic payback for our presumably miserable lives, that is” he concluded smugly with his usual circular logic and annoying lack of mental continuity and focus!

Feb 23, 2011

The GLMA, a forlorn and decidedly isolated area nestled right smack dab in the middle of the Scablands (Oh, who in tarnation came up with that name! Obviously they did not have a marketing orientation! Whoa!) and somehow on the very edge of the quite beautiful and robust Palouse (Sure, the Palouse is some name that comes from one of those foreign languages with all the subsequent negatives associated with foreigners, but at least it doesn’t have the word ‘Scab’ in there. Oh yeah, naming your area after dried blood caused by some injury or another is guaranteed to bring the tourists flocking to the place! What were those people thinking, for Pete’s sake!) – anyway, the GLMA made the national news again, at least in the medical community, when a ground breaking article was published in the ‘Journal of Abnormal Sociology’ that highlights the particulars of a cluster of unexplained and quite troubling instances of a rare and disturbing psychosis normally found in the very young or the very, very old – the quite profound and paralyzing fear of public toilets. This condition, known by medical experts as ‘Commode-a-phobia’ is best described as a quite irrational fear of and aversion to putting in public ‘restroom facilities’ in public buildings – usually in very small town settings, where town employees, guests and citizens can ‘answer the call of nature’ without going out behind the fire trucks when it is -23 F – not even factoring in the wind chill factor!

“Well, what in the dern heck do them fancy-pants planners and building code people know about what we need out here in the Lamont area?” screeched the red-faced Festus Festoon, 63, an area farmer/rancher. ‘Lamont has survived very nicely for over 100 years with no public restroom, and people just made do as best they could and it didn’t seem to hurt us none!” he gasped while attempting to stifle that pronounced facial tic he sometimes gets when faced with social injustice of any kind! “Sure, our way that we have fought so hard for for over 100 years is unsanitary, violates any number of laws, unfairly and illegally limits citizen attendance at town meetings and is basically barbaric and disgusting, but hey, this is Lamont and we don’t need any know-it-all outsiders with their ‘big city ways’ coming in here telling us that there is a better way to live and all! It took a lot of work from a lot of people to transform the once thriving Lamont into a dead-end backwater that doesn’t even have a store, and I for one will be dadburned if I am going to let all those years of gallant effort in turning the town into some Medieval hovel just go down the drain because a group of outsiders who don’t even own cows think that our ways are primitive, dysfunctional and uncivilized!” he fumed, turning even more purple, even though that seemed like a metaphysical impossibility just a moment or two ago!

“Well, it is always fascinating to discover a statistically improbable grouping of truly bizarre and quite inappropriate behaviors – what we call ‘clusters’, in a given area” said Dr. Martin Brickman, one of America’s leading experts on small town mental illness. “So when word began to trickle in about a small town that doesn’t have a public restroom after 100 years and where farmers/ranchers for miles around form themselves into mindless, seething mobs to fight against one, I immediately booked an airline flight into Spokane, rented a truck, outfitted it with a ‘Porta-Potty’ and ventured into the epicenter of the dysfunction – hoping to find the root cause of this obviously disadvantageous social and municipal phenomenon” he said bravely. “Sure, when I got there I found a small, forlorn, yet committed group who was ‘pro-toilet’ and they were fighting valiantly against a seemingly immovable wall of opposition, mostly from people with cow manure on their boots (at least we hope it was cow manure! Yikes!) Anyway, I was not there for 5 minutes when a malodorous mob of people in overalls with big belt buckles (both men and women! What ever happened to dresses, anyway?) surrounded my vehicle and began insanely rocking it – shouting “down with all them big city ways!!” and “If God wanted us to use a toilet we would have been born with one attached!!” and some other choice expressions best not repeated here! Oh, it was like being transported to some remote European village in the 11th century, except that Century West Engineering (CWE) had put in some really beautiful roads (thank you TIB!) and they had a new, quite awesome water system with some of the best water in the State (thank you CWE, USDA-RD and Dept of Commerce!) – oh yeah, and they were putting in the new fantastic library courtesy of the quite excellent Whitman County Commissioners – the library is where the town’s first public flush toilet will be, by the way! Oh, it was just so interesting to see that many people that “time forgot” all nestled in one little town right smack dab in the middle of 21st century America! It is instances like this that make all those years of struggle in graduate school so worthwhile!” he beamed proudly! "My job is like turning over a rock or whatever - you just never know what you will find squirming underneath there" he stammered excitedly!

Feb 18, 2011

In what was previously assumed to be the exclusive scourge of large metropolitan cities like Spokane, Moscow, London and Bombay (You know, that city over yonder someplace that ‘Dr. Bombay’, the warlock guy from the hit 1960’s TV show ‘Bewitched” came from!) – recent developments indicate to those forever on the lookout for such things that a Spokane-based over-achieving “Parrot Rescue” program that shamelessly and consistently saves one of God’s most spectacular creatures from situations of neglect and ill-treatment and places them with loving owners who will give them the honor, attention, respect, care and appreciation that they deserve – anyway, this rescue thing, whatever it is, is now branching out from the large cities that, sadly, should expect that sort of thing in this day and age and is invading the very heartland of America itself, concerned insiders report.

“Well, I have always loved birds, and when I heard of the problem with parrots being neglected and/or in situations where they cannot thrive I knew immediately that I wanted to do my part” said an unnamed Adams County resident who has obviously been “bewitched’ herself by those Spokane ‘big city ways’ and all that citified ‘do-goodery’. “Parrots are such special creatures and their need for a stimulating, safe, loving environment just seemed to fit perfectly with my lifestyle, so after some soul searching and thoughtful and earnest prayer I decided to give that wonderful Erika from Century West a call! Oh, she is just so sweet!” she beamed annoyingly. (Editorial Note: This mysterious Erika, the mastermind behind this whole parrot thing, is also known in the parrot ‘underworld’ as the “uber-goddess of efficiency” and seems to have quite a hankering for garlic flatbread or whatever - both characteristics of hers which run counter to true-blue, small town America, doggone it! What is wrong with plain white bread with some butter or whatever? At least those suspect traits are foreign to Lamont – so we at the Lamont Blog can’t really speak for rural Adams County, although we want to and undoubtably will!) “So anyway, I just called this sweet Erika up, and after she did the requisite investigation to make sure that one of the smartest animals on the planet would be a good fit for my family and vice-versa, the next thing I knew I had a wonderful bird who became a valued member of our household the moment he arrived!” she gushed, not realizing that she is completely under the spell of ‘one of them big city people’! “Oh, I just love my new feathered friend and look forward to many decades of companionship and love! That kooky bird is such a hoot!” she added while emphasizing that people should not enter into such a significant undertaking lightly but ever so thankful that there are people out there like Erika, even though she eats garlic, who look after those less fortunate among us, even if they do have brightly hued feathers and all and can imitate embarrassing things they hear on TV when the preacher is over for coffee or whatever!

When asked for comment, the ever-mysterious Erika, kingpin of the parrot underworld, (or should that be queenpin? Dang English language!), had no comment, or at least not one that we could understand, presumably because she had a generous hunk of decidedly aromatic garlic flatbread in her mouth at the time or whatever.

Feb 17, 2011

The Town of Lamont, long known as the place that time forgot as well as the town where people have an unnatural aversion to using fire hydrants in case of an emergency that somehow requires a whole lot of water in a relatively short period of time, dern near had its temporary population double after word leaked out that trained professionals could finally glimpse the tragic, depressing, embarrassing, decidedly humiliating polar opposite of one of the pillars of ‘Natural Selection’ in the animal kingdom, the often misunderstood principle of ‘Survival Of The Fittest’ itself. Lamont, a tiny hamlet in far northwest Whitman County (The wise Whitman County management team, often while in polite conversation, quite frequently tries to pawn Lamont off on Lincoln or Adams Counties, usually with limited to no success! But you can’t blame a County for trying, now can you?) – Anyway (dang, where was I?) The Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) is one of those thankfully rare places where the laws of the Universe somehow seem to be reversed – you know, where right is wrong, where evil is in fact good, where fixing someone’s car means sabotaging and stealing parts off of it – and, of course, where shoddy work and/or no work at all has been the historical mark of excellence while painting, cleaning up and sprucing up the place draws horrified and disbelieving facial expressions (from the long-term locals, anyway!) most akin to a man with a well-developed sense of smell having his face unceremoniously thrust in the general direction of the backside of a billy-goat! Lamont is the town, famous across the Palouse, where, until very recently, everything was pretty much backwards – but where people still live out their feeble lives, if that is what you call it when one attacks everything in sight – thus sparking the interest in the world’s scientific community – at least the ones with a high pain/dysfunction threshold!

“Well, this has been the dream of the scientific community since, well, since that Sir Isaac Newton feller came up with whatever the heck it was that he came up with, for crying out loud!” said Dr. Gomer Bodine, PhD., an area so-called scientist and farmer/rancher. (Editorial Note: Hey, don’t forget Sir Isaac’s often underappreciated brother “Fig”! Sir Isaac is such a dadburned glory hog! Just think what the world would be like without his brother’s contribution to western civilization, doggone it!) “Being from these parts, I just don’t see what all the fuss is about. I mean, sitting around griping about improvements as the place just slowly decays around us is about as natural as all get-out, but I guess them high-fluting science types need something to occupy those eggheads of theirs and all” said Dr. Bodine, a Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) insider for all of his 53 years, while scratching the seat of his pants quite inappropriately! (Dr. Bodine is also the “Grand Wizard” of the ‘Rocky Mountain Oyster’ (RMO) Appreciation/Sanctification Society! (RMO-ASS) Whoa! What credentials! What leadership! What vision for the greater good of mankind!) “Anyway, I guess Lamont is some sort of dadburned ‘Lost World’ or whatever, where folks with a largely 12th century mindset are thrust into the 21st century and have to cope and all of that! Sure, we all think that pavement is the devil’s bedspread, and that fire hydrants are stupid wastes of time and space (unless you are a dog!) and that libraries, with all them fancy books and all that dern learning, are the ultimate in extravagant boondoggles because, as everyone knows, all buildings put up by man should be designed for duel-use to also house livestock and all - especially one's favorite (pronounced 'fave-o-right'!) cow! (Don’t forget that brainstorm involving storing fire trucks in the library! Can’t forget that one! That was special!) So, on some level I just don’t see what all the fuss is about” said the mail order Doctor of Philosophy, a local graduate of a GLMA school system that obviously spent way too much money on sports and rodeo events and teaching the kids to whittle!

“Well, my colleagues and I are just excited as can be over the opportunity Lamont affords us in better understanding the clash of cultures inherent when a nest of Medieval throw-backs (only a subset of the total - but a noisy one!) are discovered right in the midst of the 21st century” said Dr. Martin Weaver, PhD, a real PhD from a real university that gives out real degrees, not them dern mail order ones the GLMA farmers/ranchers place such stock in. “So, in the academic community, towns like Lamont are known affectionately as cultural “Elephant Burial Grounds” where people chewed up and spit out by modernity go to die. The symbolism of the elephant is quite significant, given that the beasts tend to have very long memories (for perceived slights and grudges of all kinds!) and they are extremely short-sighted! Oh, the things we can learn about our past by studying the laggardly social mores of a segment of Lamont are truly staggering – but it does kind of stink that they do not have a public restroom for me and my staff to frequent as we conduct our potentially disturbing analysis of the place, that’s all!” he concluded wearily while gingerly crossing and uncrossing his legs over and over!

Feb 9, 2011

In yet another staggering blow to the crime statistics of the 2nd smallest town in the State, and area man succumbed to a shocking ‘crime of opportunity’ while in the presumably safe confines of his own doggone garage, late Tuesday. The man, whose name is being withheld to protect his identity in such an obviously humiliating and unsettling case, was attempting to crawl under his 1992 Dodge Minivan when the unprovoked attack occurred. Although the actual assault only took a second or two, the understandable life trauma could linger for years, mental health professionals report. “Well, there I was, trying to work up the courage to get down on that ice cold concrete to try to work off that stupid oil filter when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I saw this gray blur come bounding at my exposed person and before I could scream like a dadburn school girl or whatever, I felt this icy cold and wet violation of my ear canal, intermingled with some indistinct snorting sounds – and before I could even react, I saw the rear end of the fiend bolt back out my open garage door to freedom! Oh, it was horrid! And the beastly little criminal even had the temerity to wag his little stub of a tail like some sort of war victory dance over my still warm corpse! That unrestrained gloating and obvious canine smugness is what makes the whole thing so unsettling! It was bad enough that my right ear was completely covered with dog slime, but to be so gleeful over it is the part that just gets to me! Oh, this world is really going to hell in a hand basket, let me tell you!” he stammered before bursting into tears! (Oh, be a man already! Why do so many men in the Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) always have to resort to the ‘water-works’, for Pete’s sake! This is supposed to be the ‘Wild West’, for crying out loud!!! Oh, Lewis and Clark must be turning over in their dadburn graves!)

“Well, I got a call at approximately 9:32 AM from the victim requesting an oil filter wrench or whatever, so I immediately searched up the dern thing and drove over to the residence in question.” said Dale Windsor, 72, a Lamont Councilman. “So, since I was only going to be gone for a few minutes, I, of course, encouraged my Schnauzer “Max” to ride with me since he loves nothing more than riding in the car. “Well, we got there at approximately 9:57 AM and as we exited the vehicle, Max, as is his nature, bounded ahead of me and raced into the soon-to-be crime scene and, apparently, although I am not admitting anything while the statute of limitations has yet to expire, some dog that more or less looked like my dog Max ran around the van, bounded on his friend and proceeded to shove the better part of his nose into the victim’s ear – although the only thing I really remember are the girl-like screams and eventually some miscellaneous sobbing or whatever. It all happened so quick I am not sure it can be pinned on any individual ‘perp’ above a reasonable doubt, in my humble opinion” he concluded slyly! “Sure, it was tragic and all, but no one ever said this was a risk free world, now did they? Sometimes it is just better to move on when you get your ear and upper neck covered in ice cold dog mucus, if you ask me. When one seeks revenge in this world, it is often necessary to dig two graves, or so they say!” he concluded sagely. (Editorial Note: For those in the GLMA who are impervious to even the most basic of word pictures, that means seeking revenge will also destroy the avenger in the end! Ain't that true! Thank you!)

The accused, Max, a pure bred Schnauzer voted "Best Dog In Lamont" for the last 5 years, is currently under house arrest where he is busy chasing the Windsor cats, sleeping by the fire and giving long, woeful, pleading glances to his owners before, during and after all three daily human meals. (Don't forget snacks or any time the fridge is opened, regardless of the reason!) When asked for comment, Max quite shrewdly exerted his doggy ‘5th Amendment Rights’ against self-incrimination but did manage to cock one ear in such a fashion as to give a reasonable person the impression that he knows more than he has hitherto ‘confessed”. As of this writing no formal charges have been filed and the victim, a cat owner, has cleaned out his doggone ear at least a dozen times with his not unlimited supply of Q-tips! (to say nothing of the outrageous levels of scorn, ridicule and ostracization he is receiving from his rightly outraged and thoroughly indignant cats! Talk about potentially damaged goods now! Talk about the ultimate cat "Scarlet Letter"!!)

Feb 7, 2011

Wilber Festoon, an area beefcake when he is not out farming and ranching or bad-mouthing the Town of Lamont, bemoaned his unfortunate luck when a recent survey conducted by the Lamont Blog once again placed him at the pinnacle of masculine attractiveness in the Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area (GLMA) for the 4th straight year. Mr. Festoon, age 43, described locally as ‘dreamy’, ‘dishy’, ‘hotter than a $2.00 pistol!, ‘pretty as that farmer guy on ‘Hee-Haw’ (Buck Owens? Oh, we at the Lamont Blog want to apologize, Buck!!!), and any number of descriptors that are too ‘off color’ for even the shameless and ‘no stranger to the gutter’ Lamont Blog to dare publish on principle alone. Wilber, as it turns out, just wishes to be left alone to shovel manure, look up at the sky while mumbling ‘looks like rain’ and, of course, watching re-runs of that American artistic classic – the TV show ‘Gunsmoke’!

“Well, this is the GLMA, so of course our manly selection is painfully limited, but one would have to think that Wilber ‘The Love Rooster' Festoon would be considered drop dead gorgeous even in them huge towns like Fairfield, Tekoa and/or Spangle, for Pete’s sake!” said the obviously ‘hot and bothered’ Becky Snopes, age 56, a shockingly not very loyal farm wife and mother of 4 high school drop-outs. “I mean, when he comes a sauntering into the room, you can just hear the gasps for air from them other farm wife battle axes – like ‘The Love Rooster' , I mean Wilber, would ever give them sour old hags a second look while I am in the room!” said Mrs. Snopes modestly while grabbing her rear-end and tugging skyward in a vain and somewhat depressing attempt to counteract decades of abuse heaped on her by that arch rival of Lamont womanhood – that unforgiving beast – gravity! “I just think it is a shame all them hussies throwing themselves at the poor man, but all you have to do is get one look at their husbands and all the pieces seem to fall together, let me tell you. Sure, my husband, Festus, well, he ain’t no prize neither, but at least he has a few of his teeth left, for crying out loud! Why those old biddies would ever think that Wilber (okay, she said ‘The Love Rooster' again, but how much of that nauseating drivel is the Lamont Blog supposed to put up with? I mean, come on!!!) would ever think twice about them when my somewhat ‘rode hard and hung up wet’ radiance was so obviously on display just goes to show you how delusional and pathetic they really are!” she whispered before going over to join a gaggle of the above referenced farm wives – acting just as sweet and friendly as you please.

When asked for comment, ‘The Love Rooster', ahhh, we mean Wilber, just said that it is not his fault that he was blessed with such obvious attributes that the opposite gender finds so totally irresistible and that, although he recognizes the obvious unfairness of life casting his sparkling pearls before so many swine, if you will – but that he is not a man attuned to ‘all that romancing’ and just wants to be left alone with his cows. Upon hearing the news, 70% of the GLMA womenfolk immediately burst into tears and promised to love him from afar until he comes to his senses and chooses them so all the other area hags can look on in envy as they drag poor Wilber around by the nose like they do with their existing farmer/rancher husbands!

(Editorial Note: Oh, that is it! We at the Lamont Blog have to find other work! It is stories like this that make one wonder if those years in journalism school were not a complete and total waste. We may even move out of the country, for Pete’s sake! If this is representative of the ‘Heartland of America” then no wonder this nation is doomed! Oh, the humanity! Man, how could my career path get so doggone screwed up, anyway? Somehow it just seems that the whole world is conspiring against me, for crying out loud! My employer just had me do an article on some guy named ‘The Love Rooster'!! That is just so dang wrong! Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Thank you!)

Feb 3, 2011

The lowly and largely misunderstood Town of Lamont, a measly fly-speck of a municipality pretty much right in the middle of a hellish geographical region our more sane and sober State Founding Fathers quite rightly bypassed in their pursuit of happiness and normal societal and/or cultural interactions, somehow managed to come up with yet another ham-fisted expression that was immediately and quite enthusiastically embraced by the language starved citizenry for miles around – much to the chagrin and consternation of proponents of Italian food the world over. Lamont, best well known for being the town without a public restroom as well as for the truly shocking number of people, both male and female, who answer to the somewhat tragic moniker “Bubba”, (Yes, these 2 events are unfortunately related! How could they not be?) seems to be forever grasping onto expressions from other sub-cultures and making them their own, regardless of how poorly fitting they are to a given set of circumstances and heedless of the obvious incongruity they present to the stark, barren, and largely rudimentary social and verbal landscape of the Scablands of the quite beautiful Palouse in the often underappreciated and disparaged eastern portion of the Great State of Washington, for Pete’s sake!

“Well, I ain’t one of them foreign-phobes or whatever them people are who get all nervous and fidgety when some dern fool goes spouting off in some foreign dialect or whatever, so when a new and exciting foreign expression comes my way, well heck, why not use the dern thing every chance I get, for crying out loud?” said Gomer Bodine, 56, an area farmer/rancher. “Heck, as everyone knows in a 12 mile radius (roughly the size of the GLMA – Greater Lamont Metropolitan Area), we tried for years to coin a new expression somehow incorporating the much undervalued “Rocky Mountain Oyster”, (RMO!) with little enough success. Sure, those underappreciated verbal gems like “Here’s a Rocky Mountain Oyster in your eye” when slugging down a jelly jar of moonshine was appropriate and all (usually accompanied by that mysterious banjo music that seems to always be playing in Lamont at times like these!), but folks just never seemed to glom onto the dern thing. Then we tried the quite insightful “A Rocky Mountain Oyster in time saves nine”, but them cheapskates just quit eating the doggone things to save 9 of 'em and we eventually ran out of dadburned freezer space! Then, in an effort to counteract this, we began saying “Hey, that’s a one spicy Rocky Mountain Oyster!!” with one of them fancy accents from that movie “The Godfather’ or whatever, but we don’t like spices in these parts, (Whoa! Simple black pepper is even referred to as “The Devil’s Dandruff!!! I mean, come on!) so people would tend to still shy away from the hormone-laden (and quite disturbing!) delicacies. So, finally we just gave up and adopted “Hey, that’s a one spicy meatball!!” instead… Sure, that is one of them foreign expressions and all, but you can use it to describe just about every social situation – even ones that don’t have a dern thing to do with spaghetti whatsoever!” he beamed proudly, showing off his newly missing tooth! “Just the other day, my rancher cousin Skeeter Bodine (Sadly, he also has a rancher cousin named Skeeter Festoon, and this Skeeter ain’t that Skeeter!) – anyway, Skeeter came over to the house looking to borrow some beer or whatever and the doggone ingrate ended up spending the better part of an hour in our ‘facilities’, and when he finally emerged, looking slightly worse for wear, the wife could not help but exclaim “Whoa, Skeeter! That’s one a spicy meatball!” and, of course, we all knew just what the heck the little woman was spouting off about – which, if you spent any time around my wife is more of a rare occurrence than otherwise, I a-reckon!” he concluded stoically while glancing somewhat lovingly (for him!) at the mother of his 9 children!

(Editorial Note: The Lamont Blog is a family friendly news organ, and we refuse to entertain any unsolicited comments on the purported parentage of Gomer’s supposed offspring. Just because Gomer has brown hair and brown eyes doesn’t mean that he cannot be the progenitor of 3 redheads, and 6 blonds – each with either blue or green eyes, now does it? So, please confine your obviously nefarious thoughts to yourselves and let’s just move on, shall we? Let them sleeping dogs lay, as they say – whoever the heck 'they' are? Thank you!!)